Complete Prose Works
ways--the identified soul, which can really confront Religion when it
extricates itself entirely from the churches, and not before.
Personalism fuses this, and favors it. I should say, indeed, that only
in the perfect uncontamination and solitariness of individuality may the
spirituality of religion positively come forth at all. Only here, and on
such terms, the meditation, the devout ecstasy, the soaring flight.
Only here, communion with the mysteries, the eternal problems, whence?
whither? Alone, and identity, and the mood--and the soul emerges, and
all statements, churches, sermons, melt away like vapors. Alone,
and silent thought and awe, and aspiration--and then the interior
consciousness, like a hitherto unseen inscription, in magic ink, beams
out its wondrous lines to the sense. Bibles may convey, and priests
expound, but it is exclusively for the noiseless operation of one's
isolated Self, to enter the pure ether of veneration, reach the divine
levels, and commune with the unutterable.
To practically enter into politics is an important part of American
personalism. To every young man, north and south, earnestly studying
these things, I should here, as an offset to what I have said in former
pages, now also say, that may be to views of very largest scope, after
all, perhaps the political, (perhaps the literary and sociological,)
America goes best about its development its own way--sometimes, to
temporary sight, appaling enough. It is the fashion among dillettants
and fops (perhaps I myself am not guiltless,) to decry the whole
formulation of the active politics of America, as beyond redemption, and
to be carefully kept away from. See you that you do not fall into
this error. America, it may be, is doing very well upon the whole,
notwithstanding these antics of the parties and their leaders, these
half-brain'd nominees, the many ignorant ballots, and many elected
failures and blatherers. It is the dillettants, and all who shirk their
duty, who are not doing well. As for you, I advise you to enter more
strongly yet into politics. I advise every young man to do so. Always
inform yourself; always do the best you can; always vote. Disengage
yourself from parties. They have been useful, and to some extent remain
so; but the floating, uncommitted electors, farmers, clerks, mechanics,
the masters of parties--watching aloof, inclining victory this side
or that side--such are the ones most needed, present and future. For
America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within
herself, not without; for I see clearly that the combined foreign world
could not beat her down. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me.
Owning no law but their own will, more and more combative, less and less
tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood, the perfect
equality of the States, the ever-overarching American ideas, it behooves
you to convey yourself implicitly to no party, nor submit blindly to
their dictators, but steadily hold yourself judge and master over all of
them.
So much, (hastily toss'd together, and leaving far more unsaid,) for
an ideal, or intimations of an ideal, toward American manhood. But the
other sex, in our land, requires at least a basis of suggestion.
I have seen a young American woman, one of a large family of daughters,
who, some years since, migrated from her meagre country home to one of
the northern cities, to gain her own support. She soon became an expert
seamstress, but finding the employment too confining for health and
comfort, she went boldly to work for others, to house-keep, cook, clean,
&c. After trying several places, she fell upon one where she was suited.
She has told me that she finds nothing degrading in her position; it is
not inconsistent with personal dignity, self-respect, and the respect of
others. She confers benefits and receives them. She has good health; her
presence itself is healthy and bracing; her character is unstain'd; she
has made herself understood, and preserves her independence, and has
been able to help her parents, and educate and get places for her
sisters; and her course of life is not without opportunities for mental
improvement, and of much quiet, uncosting happiness and love.
I have seen another woman who, from taste and necessity conjoin'd, has
gone into practical affairs, carries on a mechanical business, partly
works at it herself, dashes out more and more into real hardy life, is
not abash'd by the coarseness of the contact, knows how to be firm
and silent at the same time, holds her own with unvarying coolness and
decorum, and will compare, any day, with superior carpenters, farmers,
and even boatmen and drivers. For all that, she has not lost the charm
of the womanly nature, but preserves and bears it fully, though through
such rugged presentation.
Then there is the wife of a mechanic, mother of two children, a woman of
merely passable English education, but of fine wit, with all her
sex's grace and intuitions, who exhibits, indeed, such a noble female
personality, that I am fain to record it here. Never abnegating her own
proper independence, but always genially preserving it, and what
belongs to it--cooking, washing, child-nursing, house-tending--she
beams sunshine out of all these duties, and makes them illustrious.
Physiologically sweet and sound, loving work, practical, she yet knows
that there are intervals, however few, devoted to recreation, music,
leisure, hospitality--and affords such intervals. Whatever she does,
and wherever she is, that charm, that indescribable perfume of genuine
womanhood attends her, goes with her, exhales from her, which belongs of
right to all the sex, and is, or ought to be, the invariable atmosphere
and common aureola of old as well as young.
My dear mother once described to me a resplendent person, down on Long
Island, whom she knew in early days. She was known by the name of the
Peacemaker. She was well toward eighty years old, of happy and sunny
temperament, had always lived on a farm, and was very neighborly,
sensible and discreet, an invariable and welcom'd favorite, especially
with young married women. She had numerous children and grandchildren.
She was uneducated, but possess'd a native dignity. She had come to be a
tacitly agreed upon domestic regulator, judge, settler of difficulties,
shepherdess, and reconciler in the land. She was a sight to draw near
and look upon, with her large figure, her profuse snow-white hair,
(uncoil'd by any head-dress or cap,) dark eyes, clear complexion, sweet
breath, and peculiar personal magnetism.
The foregoing portraits, I admit, are frightfully out of line from these
imported models of womanly personality--the stock feminine characters of
the current novelists, or of the foreign court poems, (Ophelias, Enids,
princesses, or ladies of one thing or another,) which fill the envying
dreams of so many poor girls, and are accepted by our men, too, as
supreme ideals of feminine excellence to be sought after. But I present
mine just for a change.
Then there are mutterings, (we will not now stop to heed them here, but
they must be heeded,) of something more revolutionary. The day is coming
when the deep questions of woman's entrance amid the arenas of practical
life, politics, the suffrage, &c., will not only be argued all around
us, but may be put to decision, and real experiment.
Of course, in these States, for both man and woman, we must entirely
recast the types of highest personality from what the oriental, feudal,
ecclesiastical worlds bequeath us, and which yet possess the imaginative
and esthetic fields of the United States, pictorial and melodramatic,
not without use as studies, but making sad work, and forming a strange
anachronism upon the scenes and exigencies around us. Of course, the old
undying elements remain. The task is, to successfully adjust them to new
combinations, our own days. Nor is this so incredible. I can conceive a
community, to-day and here, in which, on a sufficient scale, the
perfect personalities, without noise meet; say in some pleasant western
settlement or town, where a couple of hundred best men and women, of
ordinary worldly status, have by luck been drawn together, with nothing
extra of genius or wealth, but virtuous, chaste, industrious, cheerful,
resolute, friendly and devout. I can conceive such a community organized
in running order, powers judiciously delegated--farming, building,
trade, courts, mails, schools, elections, all attended to; and then the
rest of life, the main thing, freely branching and blossoming in each
individual, and bearing golden fruit. I can see there, in every young
and old man, after his kind, and in every woman after hers, a true
personality, develop'd, exercised proportionately in body, mind,
and spirit. I can imagine this case as one not necessarily rare or
difficult, but in buoyant accordance with the municipal and general
requirements of our times. And I can realize in it the culmination
of something better than any stereotyped _eclat_ of history or poems.
Perhaps, unsung, undramatized, unput in essays or biographies--perhaps
even some such community already exists, in Ohio, Illinois, Missouri, or
somewhere, practically fulfilling itself, and thus outvying, in cheapest
vulgar life, all that has been hitherto shown in best ideal pictures.
In short, and to sum up, America, betaking herself to formative
action, (as it is about time for more solid achievement, and less
windy promise,) must, for her purposes, cease to recognize a theory of
character grown of feudal aristocracies, or form'd by merely literary
standards, or from any ultramarine, full-dress formulas of culture,
polish, caste, &c., and must sternly promulgate her own new standard,
yet old enough, and accepting the old, the perennial elements, and
combining them into groups, unities, appropriate to the modern, the
democratic, the west, and to the practical occasions and needs of our
own cities, and of the agricultural regions. Ever the most precious in
the common. Ever the fresh breeze of field, or hill, or lake, is
more than any palpitation of fans, though of ivory, and redolent with
perfume; and the air is more than the costliest perfumes.
And now, for fear of mistake, we may not intermit to beg our absolution
from all that genuinely is, or goes along with, even Culture. Pardon us,
venerable shade! if we have seem'd to speak lightly of your office. The
whole civilization of the earth, we know, is yours, with all the glory
and the light thereof. It is, indeed, in your own spirit, and seeking to
tally the loftiest teachings of it, that we aim these poor utterances.
For you, too, mighty minister! know that there is something greater than
you, namely, the fresh, eternal qualities of Being. From them, and by
them, as you, at your best, we too evoke the last, the needed help, to
vitalize our country and our days. Thus we pronounce not so much against
the principle of culture; we only supervise it, and promulge along with
it, as deep, perhaps a deeper, principle. As we have shown the New World
including in itself the all-leveling aggregate of democracy, we show
it also including the all-varied, all-permitting, all-free theorem of
individuality, and erecting therefor a lofty and hitherto unoccupied
framework or platform, broad enough for all, eligible to every farmer
and mechanic--to the female equally with the male--a towering selfhood,
not physically perfect only--not satisfied with the mere mind's and
learning's stores, but religious, possessing the idea of the infinite,
(rudder and compass sure amid this troublous voyage, o'er darkest,
wildest wave, through stormiest wind, of man's or nation's
progress)--realizing, above the rest, that known humanity, in deepest